Why I am always late to school

I am always late to school, not just one minute, not just 10 minutes… more like 20-30 minutes late to school everyday. 

There are some days where I just don’t have the energy to get out of bed. Maybe it’s because I legitimately have insomnia, or I couldn’t put my phone down because I was watching hours of videos from guys in South Asia solving highly complex quantum physics questions or building pools out in the forest. I do this almost every night. How do they clean the pools anyway? They do all this work to build a bamboo irrigation system to run water into their pools, they harden clay, and build slides from tree houses. It’s a kid’s dream, but you would think without a way to clean the pool out, it would eventually get dirty and be full of mosquitoes the next morning. 

See, these are the things I think about when it’s two in the morning and I haven’t gotten any sleep. I looked up a guide on how to beat insomnia and it told me one of the best ways to get some sleep is to put the phone away. There’s no way I could do that. How else am I going to spend the entire night scrolling through other people’s happy lives on social media while mine is falling apart because I can’t even make it on time to class? I hold this brick of information and blinding blue light up to my face every night so I can read through the comments on my Uncle’s political posts or watch another sad video from The Dodo about foster animals. 

It was four in the morning and I knew I would only get a few hours of sleep if I slept right now. In fact, I told myself, if I slept right now, I would get about two hours and 14 minutes of sleep. Of course, doing that calculation had cost me another two minutes, so then I should put my phone down right now. But maybe one more round of opening all my different social media apps that I just checked ten minutes ago. Nobody else is awake, but maybe something important will happen in those ten minutes I thought I was going to bed. 

It’s okay, if I slept right now, I would get–

Oh, there’s my alarm. Maybe I should take the risk of closing my eyes for a couple of minutes after turning it off. I’ll wake right up anyway and won’t be late for class.

I tell myself this every morning. 

Knock, knock, knock!

My eyes slowly open… 

“GET YOUR ASS OUTTA BED, YOU’RE LATE FOR SCHOOL!” screams my mom, and trust me, I know from experience that’s the worst and scariest way to start your morning. 

I roll over to check the time on my phone and in big white text I see 8:40 displayed on my screen. Shit… I’m late. Again. 

I feel a little rush of adrenaline as I throw my blanket to the side and leap out of bed, racing around my room and grabbing all my school supplies. 

“MOM I’M READY CAN YOU DRIVE ME TO SCHOOL?!” And of course, being the wonderful mom she is, she drives me to school. The instant I take a seat in her car, there is immediate tension. One, because I made her get out of bed to drive me, and two, because I’m late for school and this happens literally every day. 

As my mom pulls up to the school, I look at the time and it’s only nine a.m. “Ok, I’m not that late there’s still an hour left,” I think to myself. 

I get out of the car and do a little speed walking to class. But on the way, I see a couple of my friends in the halls and in their classes, and of course I have to stop and say hi. 

Guess what though? All of a sudden it is 9:20 and do you know what I hear every single time I walk into class? 

“WHY ARE YOU LATE?” my teachers ask me. “Blah, blah, blah.” 

And all that’s going through my head is, “Hey, I’m here am I not?” 

But my actual response is, “I’m so sorry. My alarm didn’t go off. I’ll be on time tomorrow. I promise.”